Let’s face it, blogs can be boring, so I keep these to six snappy paragraphs — do spread the word if you find them amusing or helpful!
Wasn’t it a perfect day? Perfect weather, perfect bride, perfectly adorable bridesmaids and pageboys — even if the Most Rev Bishop Michael Curry’s sermon may have raised the eyebrow of whichever courtier was frantically trying to keep it all to time. But a few days later, it provided me with a perfect example of why light and shade matters in news, and, I believe, in business.
The day after the photographs appeared of the happy couple in the grounds of the castle, word reached our regional newsroom that the photographer had been trained at Brighton University. Regular viewers of the programme I work on will be aware that Brighton is well and truly deemed in our patch.
Further inquiry established that Alexi Lubomirski’s training was in fact in the late nineties, and he did now live a jet-set lifestyle based in New York. So the question at our newsdesk became: should we (as the regional news service for Sussex) be covering the story at all? And the answer, as the rousing Rev himself might have put it, was hell yeah.
News bulletins can be gloomy affairs. Stories like this lift them. The artist was happy to give us an interview, the University were happy to arrange shots of their current photography students, and I was interested to ask the students themselves what they made of it all. My journalism that day won’t be winning any awards. But I do think it will have put a smile on some faces.
What does your company do to put a smile on your staff’s faces? An article I read recently made a link between productivity and happiness. A no-brainer, perhaps.
But with the World Cup coming up, would a flexible attitude to working hours be an idea? My suspicion? Hell yeah!
If you’re looking for a teambuilding activity that will cheer your workforce up a bit (but give you the satisfaction of knowing you’ve challenged and developed them meaningfully too) why not give me a call to discuss a spot of my Newsroom Bootcamp?
Many thanks to my 6 year old niece Sophie, and 4 year old neighbour Evie, whose portraits of the happy couple have helped me get around any copyright infringement risk if I’d shown you Alexi’s photographs.